Gang invades CEO’s Hyde Park home
Verimark boss targeted at gated estate
BUSINESSMAN Mike van Straaten lives at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in Hyde Park, Johannesburg.
There is a boom gate at the entrance to the street, 500m from his own gate. It is manned by two armed guards. Security cameras dot the electric fences of several homes in the area.
But last weekend, none of that could stop an armed gang of robbers who drove through the security gate, parked their car and waited for the Verimark CEO’s Lamborghini to drive up to the gate.
It was just before 2pm on Saturday when Van Straaten, 62, got out of the car to pick up a newspaper at the gate. Two young men appeared and forced him into their SUV at gunpoint.
One of them then got into Van Straaten’s car and drove to his property. Once inside the house, they pistolwhipped his wife, Elizabeth, 60, and daughter, Simone, 26. Uneasy and aggressive, the robbers hit Van Straaten with the butt of their guns throughout this ordeal.
“They kept asking us: ‘Where is the safe, where is the safe?’ We don’t have a safe and we told them,” said Elizabeth on Friday.
They eventually took money and jewellery, including sentimental items such as a wedding ring and a watch Van Straaten got for his 21st birthday.
Having been victims of a house robbery before, Van Straaten knew they had to try to keep calm and co-operate.
“They kept saying: ‘We’ll f**king shoot you,’ ” he said. “It was very traumatic seeing these men hit my wife and daughter.”
He believes he was targeted as there is only one entry and exit point to the street.
Community Protection Services declined to answer questions, including why its guards had allowed the suspicious vehicle through the boom gate.
Usually, visitors are signed in and residents contacted. The company also failed to say why the camera at the boom gate did not work that day.
Van Straaten said the robbers must have known that once inside his property, they could not be seen from the street.
“When I phoned the security at the boom to ask about whether they had seen the car come in or leave, they said they didn’t see anything, and that their cameras weren’t working because of load-shedding. But we haven’t had load-shedding for almost a month.”
Cherylanne Elshikh of the Hyde Park Residents’ Association said a meeting with the Bramley police on Thursday indicated that house robberies were on the increase in suburbs such as Illovo, Hyde Park, Sandhurst, Wierda Valley, Inanda and Parkmore.
Anthony Still, the councillor for ward 90 in Johannesburg, which includes these areas as well as Craighall Park, Dunkeld, Hurlingham, Melrose, New Brighton and Sandhurst, said there were “anecdotal stories in these suburbs about house robberies, but we’ll have to wait for crime stats to reveal the truth of the situation”.
Professor Rudolph Zinn, of the police practice department at Unisa’s School of Criminal Justice, said all indications were that the upward trajectory of house robberies over the past two years would continue when crime figures were released this month. He pointed to leaked Gauteng statistics. “Whenever we see a specific crime increase in Gauteng, the rest of the country follows. If you look at the insurance data and data from the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa, they all point to an increase in house robberies.”